Table of Contents

Foreword



SPRING

John Clare First Sight of Spring
Thomas Hardy The Year’s Awakening
Emily Dickinson ‘‘Light exists in Spring’’
Mary Oliver Spring
William Shakespeare ‘‘It was a lover and his lass’’
Robert Frost Nothing Gold Can Stay
Richard Wilbur March
Gerard Manley Hopkins Spring
Stevie Smith Black March
Robert Frost Spring Pools
A. E. Housman ‘‘Loveliest of trees’’
Ted Hughes March Morning Unlike Others
Robert Frost Putting in the Seed
William Shakespeare Spring
A. E. Housman The Lent Lily
Jean Garrigue Spring Song II
James Merrill Another April
A. R. Ammons Resurrections
Elizabeth Bishop Cold Spring
William Wordsworth Lines Written in Early Spring
Kay Ryan Sonnet to Spring
Thomas Nashe Spring
Robert Herrick Corinna’s Going a-Maying
William Carlos Williams The Widow’s Lament in Springtime
D. H. Lawrence The Enkindled Spring
Charlotte Mew ‘‘I so liked Spring’’
Emily Dickinson ‘‘A little Madness in the Spring’’
Christina Rossetti Another Spring
Henry Reed Naming of Parts
May Swenson April Light
Richard Wilbur A Storm in April
Robert Herrick To Daffodils
Sara Teasdale There Will Come Soft Rains
Robert Browning Home-Thoughts, from Abroad
Lizette Woodworth Reese April in Town
E. E. Cummings [in Just-]
Walt Whitman Out of May’s Shows Selected
Mary Oliver Spring

SUMMER

Anon. ‘‘Summer is y-comen in’’
Geoffrey Chaucer Roundel
Wallace Stevens The House was Quiet and the World was Calm
Emily Dickinson Further in Summer than the Birds
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey The Sweet Season
Thomas Hardy At the Royal Academy
Henry David Thoreau "Woof of the sun’’
Mary Oliver Summer Poem
Mona Van Duyn End of May
James Schuyler I Think
John Clare Summer Moods
John Keats On the Grasshopper and the Cricket
H.D. Pear Tree
Langston Hughes Summer Night
Phyllis McGinley June in the Suburbs
Howard Nemerov Trees
Amy Clampitt Lindenbloom
H.D. Heat
Walt Whitman A July Afternoon by the Pond
Léonie Adams Midsummer
Anon. Summer Song
Ted Hughes Heatwave
May Swenson Flag of Summer
William Cullen Bryant Summer Wind
Henry David Thoreau The Summer Rain
Alice Meynell The Rainy Summer
Richard Wilbur My Father Paints a Summer
David Wagoner Falling Asleep in a Garden
Amy Lowell Dog-Days
Robert Penn Warren August Moon
Seamus Heaney August Moon
John Hollander Late August on the Lido
Robert Frost Hyla Brook
Christina Rossetti Summer is Ended
Emily Dickinson "As imperceptibly as God"
A.E. Housman "When summer's end is nighing"

AUTUMN

John Keats To Autumn
Emily Dickinson "Summer begins to have the look"
Emily Brontë "Fall, leaves, fall"
Robert Frost Unharvested
Walter de la Mare Autumn
John Clare Autumn
Amy Lowell Autumn
Edna St. Vincent Millay Autumn Chant
Percy Bysshe Shelley Ode to the West Wind
Ted Hughes The Seven Sorrows
Edith Wharton An Autumn Sunset
Alexander Puskin Autumn
Louise Bogan Simple Autumnal
Jean Garrigue The Flux of Autumn
William Stanley Braithwaite ‘‘Turn me to my yellow leaves’’
Jones Very The Latter Rain
William Blake To Autumn
Amy Lowell Hoar-Frost
Mary Tighe Written in Autumn
Henry David Thoreau The Fall of the Leaf
Wallace Stevens Autumn Refrain
Howard Nemerov The Dying Garden
Anthony Hecht An Autumnal
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Aftermath
W.S. Merwin The Love for October
Ted Hughes October Dawn
Helen Hunt Jackson October
Thomas Hardy Last Week in October
Marie Ponsot End of October
Robert Penn Warren Heart of Autumn
Thomas Hood No!
William Dean Howells November
Phyllis McGinley November
Adelaide Crapsey November Night
A.R. Ammons Late November
Thomas Hardy During Wind and Rain
Richard Wilbur Crow’s Nests
Garard Manley Hopkins Spring and Fall
John Hollander An Old-Fashioned Song
William Shakespeare ‘‘That time of year thou mayst in me behold’’
E.E. Cummings [l(a]

WINTER

William Shakespeare Winter
Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset Winter
Emily Dickinson "It sifts from Leaden Sieves"
Henry David Thoreau "Pray to what earth does this sweet cold belong"
Anne Bradstreet Winter
A.E. Housman "The night is freezing fast"
John Clare Winter Walk
James Russell Lowell The First Snow-Fall
James Merrill From a Notebook
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Snow-Storm
Gjertrud Schnackenberg The Paperweight
John Greenleaf Whittier From Snow-Bound 208
Donald Hall The Snow
William Shenstone Lines Written on a Window at the Leasowes at a Time of Very Deep Snow
Elinor Wylie Silver Filigree
W.S. Merwin To a Leaf Falling in Winter
Amy Clampitt Runes, Blurs, Sap Rising
Anthony Hecht Crows in Winter
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Snow-Flakes
Robert Frost Afterflakes
Wallace Stevens The Snow Man
Thomas Campion "Now winter nights enlarge"
Angelina Weld Grimké A Winter Twilight
Kay Ryan Winter Fear
Anthony Hecht Sestina d’Inverno
A.R. Ammons Winter Scene
Emily Dickinson "There’s a certain Slant of light"
Richard Wilbur Year’ End
Ted Hughes Snow and Snow
Emily Brontë "The night is darkening round me"
Robert Frost "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"
Karl Shapiro California Winter
William Carlos Williams Winter
Emily Dickinson "The Sky is low –the Clouds are mean"
Richard Wilbur Orchard Trees, January
Edward Thomas February Afternoon
James Schuyler February 13, 1975



Index of Authors


Acknowledgment

About the Author

J. D. McClatchy is a poet and Professor of English at Yale University. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His book Hazmat (Alfred A. Knopf, 2002) was nominated for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize. He edits the "Voice of the Poet" series for Random House AudioBooks; and has written texts for musical settings, including eight opera libretti, for such composers as William Schuman, Ned Rorem, Lorin Maazel, Bruce Saylor, Lowell Liebermann, and Elliot Goldenthal. His honors include an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has also been one of the New York Public Literary Lions, and received the 2000 Connecticut Governor's Arts Award. He received the 1991 fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, and served as an Academy Chancellor from 1996 until 2003.  He has edited or co-edited four previous Everyman's Library Pocket Poet volumes.